President Obama put the squeeze on Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday, attempting to break down Karzai’s resistance to signing a new security agreement by suggesting in a phone call that all remaining U.S. troops may leave Afghanistan by year-end if the stalemate persists.

Ever fewer countries, allies, or enemies, are paying attention, much less kowtowing, to the once-formidable power of the world’s last superpower. The list of defiant figures—from Egyptian generals to Saudi princes, Iraqi Shiite leaders to Israeli politicians—is lengthening.

Peace talks scheduled to begin Thursday between the United States and the Taliban faltered after the Afghan government complained that the Islamist political group’s newly opened Qatar office would be treated as a government-in-exile.

After more than 11 years of war in Afghanistan, a country known as “the graveyard of empires” for its inability to be conquered and held, the White House announced Tuesday that it will sit down with the Taliban and try to work things out with words instead of bombs.

Once again, the erratic president of Afghanistan had U.S. officials shaking their heads in disbelief after he gave a speech in which he blamed the interactions of the U.S. and the Taliban for his country’s security problems.

The U.S. government formally values the human right to be free from indefinite detention without charge, except in certain cases such as when the practice is useful for securing its own interests in Afghanistan and Iraq, writes Glenn Greenwald.

After a trip to Afghanistan cloaked in secrecy, President Barack Obama on Tuesday signed a “strategic partnership agreement” with Hamid Karzai that promises continuing U.S. support for the Afghan president’s nation.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has branded the Taliban’s 18-hour siege of Kabul and places across eastern Afghanistan on Sunday an intelligence failure and called for an investigation into NATO security operations.

Pointing to “the shaky, erratic and vague standpoint of the Americans” as one key reason for their decision, Taliban leaders in Afghanistan put the kibosh on plans to meet with U.S. envoys, releasing a statement on Thursday explaining the change of plans.

Less than one week after Hamid Karzai’s half brother was shot to death, Jan Mohammad Khan, a senior adviser to the Afghan president, was killed by gunmen at his home. The Taliban claimed responsibility. (more)

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was fatally shot at his home in Kandahar on Tuesday by a local police official, Sardar Mohammad, whom Karzai had included in his inner circle. The Taliban took credit for the assassination ... (more)

Tom Engelhardt, a fellow at The Nation Institute and creator and editor of TomDispatch.com, takes a close accounting of President Obama’s Afghanistan speech delivered in late June, in which Americans were told that this year the U.S. would begin winding down its war in that country. (more)

While Republicans race to cut spending, including outlays for education, health care and social services, they never mention one of the real reasons for the deficit: the cost of the war in Afghanistan and the mess we’ve made in Iraq.

As the decade draws to a close, it is clear that the bright hopes inspired by Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech have markedly faded, and the disappointments have outweighed achievements in the most important arena for contemporary American foreign policy.

Hamid Karzai and NATO would like Afghan forces to take over the country’s security by 2014, a goal Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell calls “aspirational,” as in “There may very well be the need for forces to remain in-country ... ” (more jibber-jabber after the jump)

Hamid Karzai is acting up. The Afghan president, who rankled top U.S. brass earlier this year with hints at split loyalties, has again come out with some fightin’ words against the American war effort in his country.

It’s over for the U.S. in Afghanistan, but that doesn’t mean the death and destruction are about to stop. Quagmires don’t just go away. However, the signs are everywhere that the American course in that nation is doomed.

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration had been secretly accepting millions of dollars in cash from the Iranian government. Sketchy! And on Monday, Karzai owned up to his part in the clandestine funding program ... (continued)

Nothing is certain on this front yet, but the U.S. is reportedly considering opening up some channels of communication to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and between the Taliban and the Afghan government, in the interest of long-term peace goals.

In a three-way swap that may be unprecedented in U.S. history, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to become vice president of the United States, Vice President Joe Biden will become president of Afghanistan and Afghan President Hamid Karzai will be traded to the Minnesota Vikings.

The Afghan government claims to have had contact with the Taliban, though the insurgent group denies this. The White House signaled its support, but said such contact, which the Washington Post reports is at the “secret, high-level talks” stage, “has to be done by the Afghans.”

On Monday, just two days after the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, reports that the polling process was corrupted by incidents of voting fraud had sparked an investigation, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Were they election campaign workers peacefully going about their business in a convoy in northern Afghanistan, or were some 10 people reported killed Thursday in a NATO-led airstrike actually insurgents? In this case, both versions are being claimed as fact.

It’s been a long while since Afghans have had anything resembling autonomy when it comes to protecting their own interests, not to mention their own people. Well, it’s going to be a while longer, too, but on Tuesday ... (continued)

The House has decided not to approve some $4 billion in aid to Afghanistan after The Wall Street Journal reported that the country’s notoriously corrupt government has secretly flown billions of dollars in U.S. aid and drug money to “safe havens abroad.”

Rolling Stone’s definitive piece on the “Runaway General” establishes the man in charge of the Afghanistan misadventure as an egotistical flake whose half-baked Afghan war-fighting strategy should never have been endorsed in the first place.

Relations between the U.S. and Afghan administrations have been less than cozy in recent months, but President Obama’s crew, headed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, attempted to warm things up this week by giving visiting President Hamid Karzai the royal treatment in Washington.

A professional kidnapper and Taliban commander was released from an Afghan prison 10 years early and may have won a hush-hush pardon from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the BBC reports. Karzai’s people say the president “could not recall the matter.”

So, about that whole joining-the-Taliban quip that Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai supposedly made last weekend? Didn’t happen, according to Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar, who had apparently shifted into backpedaling mode on Wednesday.

Washington once again finds itself dangerously entangled with the hostile policies, nationalistic interests and supporters, and personal ambitions of a foreign figure whom it counted on to serve American interests.

Peter Galbraith, the former U.N. envoy who claims he was fired for trying to confront the election fraud in Afghanistan, says of Hamid Karzai: “In fact, some of the palace insiders say that he has a certain fondness for some of Afghanistan’s most profitable exports.” (video after the jump)

Relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan were further strained over the weekend after the White House caught wind of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s musings that he might join the Taliban as a reaction to pressure from the West to make some changes in his country.

Although Afghan President Hamid Karzai acknowledged Thursday that last year’s presidential election had been greatly hindered by fraud, his assessment as to the source of the problem came as a surprise to the president’s main target.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has tepidly announced he is pondering introducing conscription in order to build a domestic army and police force capable of taking over security operations from NATO troops in his war-torn country.

President Obama’s failures in Israel and elsewhere abroad have astonished the international public and left in despair those Americans who can scarcely believe that a whole year has been irresponsibly wasted.

America’s top brass in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, sat down for a talk with the Financial Times last week about his strategy in the South Asian nation, how long he thinks U.S. troops will remain there and the possibility of the Taliban’s participation in the Afghan government.

It looks as if Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s Cabinet strategy is still in desperate need of repair. The majority of his nominees have once again been rejected by the parliament, casting doubt on his ability to lead in the country’s fractious political environment.

His term as the United Nations’ official envoy to Afghanistan is up in March, and in his last address to the world body Kai Eide didn’t sound especially optimistic about the state of the country. In fact, Eide said Wednesday, if certain “negative trends” he sees at work “are not reversed,” the situation in Afghanistan could “become unmanageable.”